how to generate pdb files while building library using mingw?

Question

I am cross compiling from linux to windows using the mingw32 tools. I need to generate pdb files for debugging on windows. Is there a way to do this?

Hmm, did you ask this question in [2008](http://mingw.5.n7.nabble.com/Generate-PDB-files-td17383.html)? — Jesse Good, Oct 09 '13 at 11:02
@JesseGood it's good to check in every 5 years or so and see if there's any progress on the matter. — cod3monk3y, Aug 17 '14 at 06:10
http://mingw-w64.org/doku.php/contribute#handling_of_pdb_in_gdb has a few links to some PDB projects, FWIW. — rogerdpack, Aug 21 '15 at 21:59

Pierrot · Answer 1 · 2015-03-18T11:33:41.883

18

this project gives you the ability to generate the pdb, it works in most cases for debuging :

more details can help in this post about post mortem debugging

edited Mar 18 '15 at 11:33

answered Jan 28 '15 at 00:42

Pierrot

score 6 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 20 '15 at 11:23

6

GCC/MinGW produces debug info in its own format used by GNU GDB Debugger, there is no support for Microsoft PDB format. So you can:

build application on Windows with MSVC
use Windows version of GNU GDB
try to convert debug info to PDB and use Microsoft debuggers, but there is no mature solution

answered Feb 20 '15 at 11:23

vitalyster

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 04 '18 at 04:08

Another option is to cross-compile using llvm/clang instead of mingw, since llvm can now produce .pdb files. http://blog.llvm.org/2017/08/llvm-on-windows-now-supports-pdb-debug.html

That said, I just use cv2pdb. It doesn't translate everything correctly, but it's good enough.

3 Answers3